


The Offer

by DistantStorm



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Job offers, Pre-Relationship, The Red War, the Farm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 14:44:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16834669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DistantStorm/pseuds/DistantStorm
Summary: Zavala offers Hawthorne a place in the City, after the war. So does FOTC.





	The Offer

Suraya Hawthorne is a quiet woman unless provoked or angry.

Her focus - when the topic is one she cares for - is second to none. Her drive and determination: fierce and unbridled. Zavala has come to know this about her during their communal time at the Farm, working together during the most dire time of the war. Armed with this knowledge and countless hours spent watching her shine as the beacon of humanity - the hope they thirsted for in their darkest hour, Zavala knows there is no way he would be able to control the rebuilding and restructuring efforts of reclaiming the City without her or the clan system she’d so lovingly instated.

“Fly this banner wherever you go. Make it the last thing the Legion sees before you put them down.”

Convincing her would be difficult. He started as the plans to infiltrate the Almighty were being coaxed into existence. There was no telling how long - or how short - concocting this plan would be. It could be a day, or it could be months. With most things, he assumed it would be more in the middle. The plan would be easy. The execution? Not nearly so.

“What are your aspirations,” He asks her, reviewing a file penned by a sloppy Titan. He shook his head at it. He was not expecting calligraphy, but legibility was paramount. “When this is all over?”

Her brows furrow, and she stops examining the tiny scuffs and scratches in the blue paint of her rifle. “We haven’t figured out how we’re getting to Ghaul yet. Don’t you think that’s a better use of your time than asking me what I want to be when I grow up?”

The phrase makes him grunt. She knows it as a restrained laugh. Traveler, he needed to let go sometimes. Sometimes she misses them fighting all the time. Not that they didn’t have at least one good blowout a week over some issue that she was (usually) right about.

His azure gaze slides over to her. “Part of being in command means being several steps ahead of your enemies - and your subordinates, Hawthorne.” He turns fully, setting the report down on the old wooden table. His hands fall into their at ease position, tucked behind his back. More directly this time he questions, “What will you do, when the City is ours once more?”

“You mean yours,” She says, meeting his eyes. “I have no claim to the City. My place is out here.” He frowns. She can see the cogs turning in his head. He has some plan, and she’s to be a part of it, apparently.

“Is it, though?” He motions beyond the little, cracked window of the Farmhouse. “I’d reason that your place,” His eyes grow marginally brighter, “Is with your people. Or are you not their leader?”

“I’m what they need right now, sure,” She counters easily, rising to her feet with a marginal widening of eyes and subsequent roll of them for flavor. She steps around him to leave before things get out of hand. “But not what they deserve. Certainly you can do better than me.”

No, he thinks, when she’s gone. She has it all wrong. They do not deserve her, this woman who has no idea of her worth.

-/

The next time he mentions it to her is days later. She is bouncing a small child that fusses and clings to her shirt with tiny hands as it cries. She’s swathed it in her poncho, and he can see the goose-flesh up her arm. It’s not warm out here. The child is barely a year old, she tells him when he sits beside her and tucks his arm behind her back not so much to put an arm around her, but to prevent the cold metal of his armor from touching her bare skin. He does not have the Light to keep him warm like he normally would.

Eventually, the cries die down, and the little one settles. Hawthorne rubs small circles into the child’s back, eventually shifting so that the child rests in the crook of her arm. It looks so natural to him, her maternal instincts crisp and stark against the rest of her personality - she can be nurturing, sure, but this is something different. More personal.

“Do you like children?”

She laughs. An appropriate, but surprising question. He’s insatiably curious. “I certainly have enough of them, between all the Guardians getting into trouble and my scouts,” She gives him a half grin. “But they’re not for me. This one’s cute now, but I’m just watching her until her mother finishes treating some of our wounded. She won’t be cute when she wakes up hungry and I can’t accommodate her, if you know what I mean.”

He hums. It’s not often that he’s so close to a child this small, and Guardians have never - Light or not - been able to produce offspring. Considering the nature of their work, it makes sense.

“You would never-”

She looks at him from the corner of his eye. “Nope.” The pop of the consonant is both soft and loud at the same time. There’s some finality to it. “Can’t raise a kid in the wilds.”

“You could in the City.”

“This is even less smooth than your last attempt,” She admonishes. “What do you even want me in the City for anyway? You fall in love with me or something?” She laughs at his speechless face, jaw almost slack at the accusation.

“I think not,” He grits, not liking the teasing directed his way.

She rocks the child a little to keep her asleep when she shifts and sticks her thumb into her mouth. “Then what are you after?”

He looks ahead, at the tent city. A patchwork quilt of banners and flags, some beautifully crafted, some pieced together haphazardly with whatever was around. “The Clans.”

“There’s no way that all the clans are going to support the Vanguard, Zavala. You’ve said it yourself. There’s way too many conflicting interests.”

Zavala shakes his head. “That isn’t what I mean. The people will not stop associating with their clans when they return to the City, Hawthorne. They need someone to continue guiding them.”

“Didn’t I tell you-”

“That someone is you,” He asserts, interrupting her. “There is no one else better suited to the task.” He gestures to the child. “They trust you. The civilians look to you for hope. The Guardians lean on you for strength. Even I admire your efforts-”

“Whoa, hey, let’s not have a moment here.”

He harrumphs. “What I am saying,” He continues, redirected, “Is that there is a place for you in the City, after the war is over. We would be honored to have you with us.”

She laughs. “Don’t sound so formal about it, it isn’t like we’re ending the war tomorrow.”

“Think about it.”

She sighs. “Will it get you off my back about it?”

“For now,” He relents.

“Fine. I’ll think about it.” The flap of the triage tent opens, and a man exits with a woman in tow. “That was quicker than expected. Let me go hand this one back to her Mother.”

“Promise me.”

She looks back at him. His eyes are earnest. She inhales deep. “I’ll think about it, Zavala. Just don’t want to get your hopes up.”

-/

“Stop looking at me like that. It’s a scratch.”

He looks away under her piercing gaze. He’s furious with himself. “My armor would have held against that spear.” He’s referring to the little band of Fallen foot soldiers they’ve recently dispatched when they’d come a bit too close to the Farm for comfort.

“You need your armor for the final battle. The plans are in place, we have less than a week to prepare. There’s no way we could refab your armor in that amount of time if it didn’t.” She winds the bandage around her arm and ignores the slight burn in her side from where it’d grazed her there, too. It was mostly a burn from the electrical pulse. “Don’t worry about me.”

“It’s hard not to,” He admits quietly.

Her gaze darkens. “You think I’m that incompetent?” The words on her lips are acidic. Her stomach does a sickening flop in her chest.

Zavala’s eyes widen. “No. I didn’t mean it like that,” He asserts hotly. “I did not mean to imply that you are incompetent in the slightest.” His eyes flick to hers. “I worry for you,” He concedes. A simple admission. Unguarded and heavy with implication.

Hawthorne smiles and it’s comparable to a rose in bloom - slow and beautiful. “Then you should understand why I did what I did.” It’s as close to an admission of the same that she’ll allow. She is not open with her emotions - like him, she reflects the will of the people. Underneath all that, buried inside, is what she feels, who she is. He likes to think he sees more of it - more of her - than most.

She ties off the wrap and pins it in place, sliding her poncho over her injury but not tucking her hand in. She drops onto the bench beside the shoddy table and pats the spot next to her. He complies and sits beside her.

“So, the City. What exactly do you want me to do there that I can’t do here?” He looks at her, startled. “What? You asked me to think about it! I’m thinking about it.” She leans against him, bumping him slightly to get his attention away from his surprise. She stays put when he doesn’t budge, scooting closer to put her head against the smaller of his two pauldrons. She feels him freeze through his armor, but she still gets a little bit of sick pleasure from making him uncomfortable. She’s seen his grin and knows he’s the same damn way when it comes to her sometimes. “Talk.”

The Commander does. “It wouldn’t be too much different - aside from the location.” She hums. “Act as a liaison between civilians and Guardians. Keep us all on the same page, working toward the same goals.” He carries on about her day-to-day tasks and wonders, based on how relaxed her body is against his, if the battle earlier has tired her out. It would be his luck, that she acquiesced to his request to consider and then fell asleep in the middle of the only non-evasive discussion they had on the topic.

“And who would I answer to?” She asks, voice plenty alert.

He almost sighs in relief, but pauses. “You wouldn’t be in our command structure. You would be an ambassador for the Vanguard. I’m not sure where that would put you with the Civilians or FOTC, but likely in a similar role. Advising, consulting, mediating, and so on.”

“They’ve asked me to work for them, as well,” She reveals to him. “FOTC. They’re far pushier than you are, though.” This time, when he tenses, she pulls away to get a good look at his face as she speaks. “I told them I had a lot to consider. Which is the truth. They want me to run field operations and provide technical support. ‘I get things done,’ they told me. They also want a hand in the organization and betterment of the Clans. It’s a really good offer.” It’s nice to be appreciated, she thinks.

The sheer disappointment on his face is apparent. He nods. “It seems you have a great deal to think about.” He stands abruptly and leaves her staring after him.

-/

“Tell me how you did it,” Zavala grunts, as Devrim pours tea from a very fragile looking kettle. Outside the Church, the Fallen and Cabal fight on, while the scouts and guardians pick off the survivors on both sides. “I assume you were the one they tasked with recruiting her?”

“Recruitment?” Devrim looks at the Commander, eyes hard, lips pursed. “Ah.” He takes a sip of his tea, cooled to the perfect sipping temperature. “FOTC did say that they planned to approach Suraya.” He sits across from Zavala on a mostly intact stool, leaving his guest the more sturdy couch. Between them is a table made of splintered wood that looks more like matchsticks than anything structurally succinct.

“They didn’t ask you to recruit her?”

“I didn’t think she’d agree to work for them,” Devrim admits. It’s a bit alarming that this is what brings the Commander to him. He’d expected Zavala to approach him in an attempt to get Suraya under control, not over something like this. “She doesn’t exactly scream diplomacy, now does she?” He says, with a little lilt and the slightest raise of an eyebrow.

“Not quite,” Zavala agrees. They share a small smile.

“Something doesn’t add up though,” The militiaman turned scout says. “Let me see.” It’s a moment or two before Devrim turns to his radio and dials it in. “Bishoff,” He calls over the comms to one of his officer friends, “Did you lot ever approach Suraya?”

The radio crackles with static. “Yeah, we did. She listened to what we had to say, didn’t even get defensive like you said she would.” The radio returns to static as the officer pauses. “We thought we had her.”

Devrim nods. “She turned you down, as I suspected.”

“Yeah,” He laughs, “She did. Not for the reason we thought. Said Zavala convinced her to take a job working for the Vanguard - in a sense, at least. I thought she tolerated him for sake of the war, but you should’ve heard her. Seems she cares quite a bit about what the Commander thinks.”

“You don’t say.” A glance back at the stone-silent Commander was enlightening. Seemed to Devrim that there was a whole lot of concern about what everyone thought, but very little communication about what exactly those thoughts were. “I’ll check in in a few hours.”

“Copy. Stay safe.”

Devrim’s tea is almost lukewarm when he sits down again. “You know she wouldn’t have told them that if she were going to refuse you, yes?” He fixes the Awoken man with a stare. “Commander, I don’t know how you’ve managed to do it. I don’t want to. Suraya obviously cares for you. She-”

“She cannot believe she had to come out this far to track you down! You could have asked me. Or, if you hadn’t stormed away from me the other night, I would have been able to tell you that I turned them down.”

Both men turn and stare at her surprise appearance. “I did not storm away,” He grouses. It’s petulant, especially for him.

“Finish your tea,” Devrim says with a shake of his head. Always a wildcard, his Suraya, popping up where she’s least expected. “It’s not a short ride back to the Farm and I suspect you’ll need some fortification for whatever conversation this is about to be.”

“Jeez, Dev, I’m not going to yell at him that much.” Her eyes rake over Zavala, earthy browns and subtle yellows lit with amusement as she says, “He might fire me before I actually get to accept the job.”

Zavala sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. “As far as I can tell, you have already accepted,” He says, the light of his eyes the only indication that he might be similarly amused if not simply grateful. “And like I told you, I am not your boss. I cannot fire you.”

She laughs. Zavala cannot help the tiny pull of his lips upward in response. Devrim looks between the two of them, nearly incredulously. Both look back at him, confused. “What?” They ask in near-perfect unison.

What an interesting development, the gentleman sniper thinks to himself. Of all the men in the world, this was the one Suraya had chosen to align herself with. She certainly set the bar high. And Zavala, well, Devrim wouldn’t assume to know what the man’s thought process was, but he certainly had interesting - exotic taste. Suraya is one of a kind.

Despite the influx of thought, Devrim smiles, shaking his head. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Go on, battles to fight, wars to win. We’ve wasted enough time, wouldn’t you say?” He’s still shaking his head when he hears the sound of the small ship skittering away. He retrieves his rifle and returns to his post. Smirking, he murmurs, “Their enemies don’t stand a chance.”


End file.
